Tuesday, February 2, 2016

Iran’s Ties With Al Qaeda In Iraq’s Abu Musab al-Zarqawi

The history of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi the founder of Al Qaeda
in Iraq has largely been written. He grew up as a petty criminal in Jordan,
travelled to Afghanistan twice after the war with the Soviets was over and set
up his own camp with the help of Al Qaeda, was imprisoned in Jordan, and
eventually went to Iraq to fight the Americans. The one part of his life that
has not been written about much was his two stints in Iran in 2001 and 2003 and
his ties with the government there. Zarqawi originally began running his supply
lines through Iran to his camp in Afghanistan, and later received direct
support from Tehran when he was building up his terrorist network in Germany
and Iraq.

When Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was organizing his jihadist
organization in Afghanistan called Jund al-Sham it included cells and routes
through Iran. In 1999,
Zarqawi travelled to Afghanistan for the second time after he was amnestied
from prison in Jordan. When he arrived in the country he stayed in an area
under the control of the warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. Zarqawi then met with
Osama bin Laden in Kandahar. The two did not get along as they had different views
on jihad, but prominent Al Qaeda leader Saif al-Adel thought that the group
should maintain contacts with Zarqawi That led Al Qaeda to provide Zarqawi with
$200,000 to help him set up his own camp in Herat along the Afghanistan-Iranian
border in 2000. There he went about creating his own network that stretched to
Europe and Iran. The Iranian city of Mashhad for example, became an important
way station for men and material to enter Zarqawi’s camp. His top operative in
Iran was a man named Abu
Ali who ran and coordinated a cell in Germany. Afghanistan had become a
failed state controlled by various factions and warlords after the Soviet
withdrawal in 1989. Zarqawi had missed out on the war against the communists in
the country, but like many other jihadists felt it provided a perfect setting
to start his own organization. This was probably where Tehran first became
aware of his activities as it supported both Hekmatyar and Al Qaeda. It also
did nothing about him establishing his supply lines through Iran.

Zarqawi would become more involved with Iran after the U.S.
invasion of Afghanistan. In October 2001 the Americans began their campaign to
overthrow the Taliban. Zarqawi and his men fought alongside Al Qaeda in Herat
and Kandahar, during which time he was wounded by a U.S. airstrike. The war
drove Zarqawi and 300 of his men to flee
to Iran in December. He then went to Tehran for medical treatment on his
injury. Zarqawi ended up staying in Iran until April 2002, and was initially hosted
by a follower of Hekmatyar who he’d met from his time in Afghanistan. Zarqawi
then set about rebuilding
his organization, setting up camps and safe houses in Zahedan, Isfahan, and
Tehran. He also established ties with Ansar al-Islam in Iraq’s Kurdistan, and
travelled to Lebanon, Syria and the rest of Iraq to recruit. Germany’s Federal
Office of Criminal Investigation (BKA) in an investigation that ended in the
arrest of a Zarqawi cell found evidence that Iran was actively supporting him
at this time. According to the German Federal Intelligence Service (BND), the
Iranian Revolutionary Guard provided Zarqawi with phone numbers he could use.
Jordanian intelligence seconded the Germans, and claimed that Iran provided
weapons, uniforms, and equipment to the terrorist. When Zarqawi was based in
Afghanistan, the Iranian authorities turned a blind eye to his activities in
their country. When he relocated there in 2001, they became more actively
involved in his operations. As long as he was focused upon striking the west
and Arab governments Tehran didn’t appear to have any problems with him being
in the country.

During this time Zarqawi met back up with Al Qaeda leader Saif
al-Adel in Iran, and the two decided that Iraq should be their next focus due
to the impending U.S. invasion. Adel would later write
that Iraq would be the perfect opportunity to create an Islamic State. The
American intervention could be used as a rallying cry for the Islamic masses to
be radicalized and turned towards jihad. Zarqawi then decided upon a two-part
plan. First, most of his men would move to Kurdistan and work with Ansar
al-Islam in preparation for the American arrival. Other would go to Germany
where they were to carry out terrorist attacks upon Jewish targets. Zarqawi and
Adel were right, Iraq did provide a turning point for jihadists, and turned the
former into an international terrorist that would rival even bin Laden. His
activities in Germany would also hasten his move into Iraq.

In April 2002 Zarqawi’s cell in Germany was arrested leading
to the West to put pressure on Iran to crackdown on his group. The detention of
Zarqawi’s men in Germany alerted the western authorities to his presence in
Iran and how his network was working. Both Germany and the United States
complained to Tehran about it harboring the terrorist. The Iranians responded
by arresting Zarqawi and almost all of his operatives in the country. They were
released after a few weeks. That led Zarqawi to leave the country for Syria,
and then Iraqi Kurdistan. By May 2002 Zarqawi was in Baghdad organizing for the
U.S. invasion. Zarqawi was still a rather minor jihadist leader at the time.
While Tehran had supported him to keep tabs on the radical Islamist community,
he was not important enough to be protected. Zarqawi could see that and he was
already planning on moving to Iraq, so these events simply moved forward his
timetable.

The Iraq war actually made Zarqawi turn to Iran one more
time. Zarqawi and his allies in Ansar al-Islam had their camps wiped out in
Kurdistan during the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Both ended up going to Iran as a
result as both had ties
with Tehran. There, Zarqawi met up with Saif al-Adel once again who asked for
help getting Al Qaeda operatives into Iraq. Zarqawi agreed to funnel them via
his networks in Syria, and many of them joined his organization Tawhid wal
Jihad, which would later become known as Al Qaeda in Iraq.

The major question that comes to mind when reading these
reports of ties between Iran and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was why would they work
together when Zarqawi was so vehemently anti-Shiite? There are many possible
answers. First, many governments in the Middle East maintained ties to jihadist
organizations even ones they didn’t agree with to surveil them. Second, Tehran
saw that Zarqawi could further its foreign policy goals. This started in Afghanistan
as Zarqawi was setting up his first camp. The Iranian government might have
thought they could use him later on if he made anything out of himself. That
happened when Zarqawi decided to move to Iraq as both he and Iran were
interested in fighting the Americans and undermining their plans for a
post-Saddam nation. For Zarqawi he apparently found Tehran a marriage of
convenience. He could use Iran as a way station for his men that did not rely
upon routes through Pakistan, which were dominated by the established jihadist groups
in Afghanistan. After Zarqawi returned to Iraq for good after the U.S. invasion
there was little on his ties with Tehran. What is clear is that he established
relations with the Iranian government that lasted from 2000 to at least 2003. They
both benefited as Zarqawi found a base and safe haven to work out of, while
Iran ended up backing the deadliest insurgent faction against the U.S.
occupation of Iraq. Tawhid wal Jihad’s bombings in Baghdad in 2003 drove off
many foreign countries, companies, and international organizations that might
have helped the Americans, thus immediately undermining reconstruction. Today,
Iran is fighting Zarqawi’s successor the Islamic State, but at one time the two
worked together. Such is the Byzantine nature of Middle Eastern politics.

Iraq History Timeline

About Me

Musings On Iraq was started in 2008 to explain the political, economic, security and cultural situation in Iraq via original articles and interviews. I have written for the Jamestown Foundation, Tom Ricks’ Best Defense at Foreign Policy and the Daily Beast, and was responsible for a chapter in the book Volatile Landscape: Iraq And Its Insurgent Movements. My work has been published in Iraq via NRT, AK News, Al-Mada, Sotaliraq, All Iraq News, and Ur News all in Iraq. I was interviewed on BBC Radio 5, Radio Sputnik, CCTV and TRT World News TV, and have appeared in CNN, the Christian Science Monitor, The National, Columbia Journalism Review, Mother Jones, PBS’ Frontline, the Center for Strategic and International Studies, the Institute for the Study of War, Radio Free Iraq, Rudaw, and others. I have also been cited in Iraq From war To A New Authoritarianism by Toby Dodge, Imagining the Nation Nationalism, Sectarianism and Socio-Political Conflict in Iraq by Harith al-Qarawee, ISIS Inside the Army of Terror by Michael Weiss and Hassan Hassahn, The Rise of the Islamic State by Patrick Cocburn, and others. If you wish to contact me personally my email is: motown67@aol.com